


The Dovahkiin Comes

by IncompleteSentanc (Erava)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 07:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11308281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erava/pseuds/IncompleteSentanc
Summary: When a dragon needs a slayin’,The Dovahkiin comes a’ preyin’.





	The Dovahkiin Comes

Eisa dies while dead. 

To the general mind, that wouldn’t make sense. But how else do you describe dying while already dead? She’s in Sovngarde, killing off the world’s meanest, ugliest dragon, and she dies when she’s done.

She dies dead, and there’s no other way to put it.

The issue isn’t in her death. No, the death is an easy enough thing - there’s not much pain in Sovngarde, being dead already and all. But what does hurt is nothing on the scale to some of the things she’s felt - like being gently roasted by a different dragon while still alive to feel it. 

No, the death is easy, simple, and relatively clean.

The issue’s that she wakes up.

 

* * *

 

“This isn’t right.” Eisa determines, looking around the white abyss that surrounds her. White, white, white and more white. The white is not right. She reaches up, momentarily startled to see she has a hand now - she thought she’d lost that to Alduin - and brushes orange-red hair out of her face. 

She touches her face.

Yep.

Solid and fleshy. Not a zombie or a skeleton.

“Hm.”

For a moment longer she stands there, awkwardly staring at the sheer nothingness around her, and then she suddenly feels like she’s falling - so fast that it steals the breath from her lungs.  _ What? _ She wonders, dazed.

It’s only a few moments before she passes out - and then wakes up, again.

This time, she’s not in a white abyss - but rather, a forest.

She blinks up at the trees, head cradled by leaves, and after a moment, she shoves herself upright. Her head spins dangerously, leaving her swaying for a precarious moment. “Uhg,” Eisa grunts, grimacing and cradling her head with one gloved hand.

Her headache reminds her of a time when she’d gotten into a drinking game with a daedric prince.

When she finally feels capable, she takes a breath and opens her eyes, taking in her new environment.

The world  _ looks _ normal enough - except that all the trees are wrong. They don’t look like the trees of Skyrim - not even that of the Rift. She pushes to her feet, staring up at the dark green, leafy branches. They look… strange. The towering height of the pine trees, with the branching leaves of a birch tree, with the color and thickness of the pine tree branches.

It was an odd combination of trees. They vaguely remind her of the trees in Cyrodiil, except not quite that, either. She turns in a slow circle, taking in the new scenery, before picking a direction at random and walking. The earth, at least, feels the same under her feet as Skyrim’s earth does - if a bit less frozen. 

It takes nearly thirty minutes of walking for her to find a rough looking path, more dirt than stone, and she frowns at it before she picks a nice, big rock to sit on. It’s just off to the side of the path, perfectly in view, and Eisa perches herself on it. She pulls her shortsword from its sheathe and lays it across her lap, fishing through her pockets for a whetstone to sharpen it with.

She settles in, running the stone carefully over the edge of her sword, frowning at all the little nicks she finds in the metal, until someone finds their way to her.

Eisa pauses nearly two hours later when a shadow falls over her. She blinks once, noting the gray hem of robes that had just barely stepped into her line of sight, then looks up curiously. A man, tall and dressed in clothing as grey as his hair and bear, looms over her, his pointed hat casting oddly sinister shadows over his face. 

“Hm.” He hums consideringly, squinting down at her.

Eisa blinks up at him, more than a little confused. He was dressed somewhat (very, very vaguely) like the Mages of Winterhold, with a suspiciously shapely ‘walking stick’ clutched at his side. She pauses long enough to shift her gaze to the maybe-staff, eyeing the elaborately designed bulbous end of it, before looking back at the probably-a-wizard.

Whom remains with the same expression, though maybe with even more squinting now. “I believe you are  _ just _ the thing I’ve been missing, my dear girl.” He says decisively, and before she can even finish considering actually speaking up for once (to ask what the hell that meant), the almost-definitely-a-wizard sweeps on suspiciously. “Tell me, have you seen any, hm..., bright white abysses recently?” He demands gruffly.

_ What. _

She stares at him, brow furrowed, and he stares intently back. Too intently.

What an uncomfortable likely-wizard of a man. 

When it becomes clear he is going to stare at her for as long as it takes to get an answer out of her, she reluctantly offers a small nod.

“Yes, of course you have.” The  _ absolutely-a-wizard _ says huffily, like he’d known all along and she’d been wasting his time. “Well. Did anyone speak to you, then? Explain your purpose? Hm?” The wizard rattles off rapidly, a bushy eyebrow rising demandingly.

She frowns a little.

“Bah, of course not. Come along, then. Either I found you here for the very reason I’m about to find someone else, or you have nothing better to do and may as well accompany me until it is revealed upon you whatever task you may or may not have on this land.” The wizard says, so rapidly she can’t even follow it all. “Well?” The wizard demands sharply, apparently expecting a response.

Eisa decides that confused staring is a perfectly acceptable response to this situation. 

The wizard huffs out another breath, pulling his staff closer to his chest and leaning forward on it to stare even more intently at her. “Are you going to help me slay a dragon or not?”

Eisa rolls her eyes skyward, annoyed and exasperated all at once. She’d been taken to a what she suspects is a completely new realm, and still she had to fight dragons? Uhg. She pulls her sword from her lap and pushes herself to her feet, sheathing the blade in one quick, silent motion. The wizard looks down at the scabbard briefly in surprise, then nods sharply at her and offers her a slightly less grumpy look. “I thought so. Let us be on our way then, my dear. I am Gandalf the Grey, by the way.” He very belatedly introduces himself, turning to start down the path.

“Eisa.” She returns simply, falling into place at his side, and says nothing else, not even when he shoots her a look with a demandingly raised eyebrow.

It was just her name - and until she’s more comfortable in the strange world she’s found herself in, it’s all the information the wizard is getting out of her.

 

* * *

 

Gandalf was quick to realize she had no intention of speaking back to him, though he obviously knew she listened well enough, because the old wizard blathered on enough for the both of them. He talks about Erebor and dwarves, Moria and more dwarves, the Blue Mountains and even more dwarves, and then he talks about dragons. “Smaug the Terrible, they call him. He’s a mere firedrake, but even a mere firedrake is a terrible force in the world we live in now. There was once a time when the most fearsome dragon to terrorize this land was the size of the Misty Mountains themselves, but nowadays, the much more reasonably sized Smaug is the greatest winged threat upon Middle-Earth.”

Eisa only understands about half of what he’s saying most of the time, but she listens intently, and nods dutifully when it’s time to. Gandalf looks sideways at her now, his bushy mouth twisting into a frown.

“Not that I’m complaining, of course. I would never have wished for Smaug’s continued existence, much less that of the true dragons of old. Regardless, he is, as I mentioned, a mere firedrake. The size of a small village, maw the size of a house, and claws the size of entire people. Three or four, if they’re of a smaller race.” Gandalf adds the last part thoughtfully and Eisa frowns a little.

The size of a small village? And he was considered a ‘mere’ anything?

Perhaps she was less prepared for this than she’d thought…

“Do you happen to know anything of dragons?” He asks suddenly, looking like he’d only just realized he should probably ask that.

She shrugs faintly. Obviously she knows  _ quite _ a lot about them, but then again,  _ her _ dragons were only the size of a small home at the largest. Who knew what this places’ dragons were like?

“Ah, well. As I mentioned, Smaug is a firedrake. That means he breathes, well, as you might guess,  _ fire. _ ”

Indeed, she likely could have guessed that.

“Great pillars of fire, really. Hot enough to incinerate bones if he puts his mind to it. Or so I’ve been told, at least, though that may have been embellished - it  _ has _ been two hundred years or so, after all. Plenty of time for stories to become  _ tales. _ ” Gandalf muses. “Regardless, no doubt that is his most frightening feature. Of course, the Elf-sized claws are rather intimidating up close, I’d imagine, but given his size, he’ll  _ most likely _ be slow enough to probably avoid impalement.” 

Wizards, Eisa was beginning to realize, were  _ very _ strange in this new world. And not terribly inspiring.

Then again, she’d faced down Alduin himself and had come out on top. Arguably, at least. He  _ had _ died first, after all... Regardless, Smaug didn’t sound too frightening if all he could do was breathe massive pillars of fire. Alduin could summon  _ meteors. _

And other dead dragons, if he happened to be around one…

“Truthfully, I daresay the dragon will be the  _ easy _ part for you, my dear. Dwarves, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult for other races to spend long periods of time with.” Gandalf huffs, and she really, really,  _ really _ hopes they’re nothing like the dwarves from  _ her _ world.

If she ever met one of those, she’d gut them like a fish, and probably still come out feeling like she’d been too merciful.

She’d seen far too many Falmer camps to feel otherwise.

“You look irritated. Cheer up, my dear, the dwarves shouldn’t be  _ too  _ difficult to get along with.” Gandalf reassures her, then pauses, his brow furrowing. “Unless, of course, you find yourself incapable of earning their respect. In which case you will find yourself facing the full force of their…  _ colorful _ personalities.” Gandalf falls silent for a moment, then seems to repress a shudder. “I’ll do my best to assure you don’t have to suffer such a fate. It would be amusing for me, I imagine, but not so for anyone else involved.” He muses, then nods sharply again. “Yes, yes, best I intervene if I must…”

He trails off into quiet mumbling for a brief moment longer, then goes silent altogether, and Eisa takes the time to consider her  _ own _ thoughts for once. It’s a nice break from the constant flow of the wizard’s thoughts.

Though, mostly, her attention is drawn to the trees around them. They still look…  _ weird _ . Not at all like the trees of Skyrim, and even less like the trees in the Rift.  _ What a strange world, this place. _ She muses, frowning a little. It’s warm here, even now, when she’s been told it’s supposedly early spring. Early spring in Skyrim meant the beginnings of snow melt, not at least a month  _ after _ snow melt.

The wizard starts up again, apparently having caught his breath. “Now dwarves are a complicated race, my dear. Loud, rude, generally unpleasant to be around. Quite the shock to most races, and quite warranted, I say - but a jolly lot, really. You ought to give them a good chance, they’ll most likely only make you regret it a few times. Of course, you’ll be quite the shock yourself. I hope you don’t mind  _ ducking. _ ” Gandalf adds the last part out of nowhere, thoughtfully puffing on his pipe. “Short people, the dwarves. The hobbits, even more so. You’re tall, too.” He muses, which is rich coming from him - he’s nearly as tall as an Altmer.

She  _ is _ tall for a Nord, though, so she doesn’t say anything.

He sends her a mildly suspicious look, eyeing her up and down. “Tall indeed. And strangely haired. You don’t see that color this far west, you see, so it’ll stand out. A hood, I think, might…” He trails off when she chooses that moment to pull a folded up hood from her bags.

In merely a moment, she’s swung it over her head, carefully tucking her hair away as they walk.

Gandalf eyes her beadily before harrumphing softly. “Very well, then. A woman prepared, I see. Hmph.” 

For some reason, this seems to displease him. The wizard goes quiet, silently walking alongside her.

Eisa resists the urge to sigh, looking ahead at the path instead.

 

She can already tell it’s a strange, strange realm she’s found herself in.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a silly idea I was entertaining. May or may not continue. I hope you liked it either way :D


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